Question

I have something like this:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base

has_many :things do 
        def [](kind)
            find(:first, :conditions => ["kind = ?", kind.to_s])
        end
    def []=(kind, config)
        thing = self[kind]

        if thing.nil?
            #create  new thing
            ap self # prints all things that person has
        else
            # update 
        end
    end
end

With the above code, I can do something like person.things[:table] and it will find a thing with person_id of whatever person’s id is, and kind of table. The first method is fine.

It’s the second method that I don’t know how to implement.
If I want to set the configuration of a table, I want to do it like this person.things[:table] = {:my => "config"}

That will be fine if the table already exists.
But what if I want to create a new thing?

Normally, creating a Thing would look like this:

thing = Thing.new({
  person_id => person[:id],
  kind => "table"
  config => {}
})

but, since I’m doing an association extension, and want to create a new object, how do I get the person id?

using
ruby 1.8.7
rails 2.3.14

Answer 1

I haven’t used this recently, but have you tried

proxy_association.owner

inside the extension? This should return the Person, I believe.

Documentation: RoR Guides.

Edit: I just noticed that in your example, a Person is not an ActiveRecord model? Was that an omission?

For Rails 2.3.14, you want to use AssociationProxy’s proxy_owner method.
then just do things.proxy_owner[:id]